Chefs to government: Don’t change ‘organic’ rules for fish

Check out the following essay by Barton Seaver, executive chef and partner at Hook restaurant in Washington, and Rick Moonen, executive chef and owner of RM Seafood at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

A fishy definition of organic

By Barton Seaver and Rick Moonen

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

As one of the busiest of all times for food professionals, the holiday season will make us work hard to put our best spatula forward. And to keep our competitive edge, we depend on the freshest and healthiest ingredients available to keep our guests coming back for seconds.

But the U.S. National Organic Standards Board recently convened in Washington to consider amending U.S. organic standards to include farmed fish such as salmon and cod. And this proposal, driven by special interests, is not only hard for us to stomach but it’s also leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many of our fellow food professionals around America as well.

When the board makes its final decision, perhaps within a couple of months, it should consider the view from within the kitchen.

Wearing the right hat doesn’t make you a chef. It takes years of training and education to master the skills and meet the standards expected at a major restaurant today. In the same way, just changing the rules so that farmed salmon and other carnivorous finfish can be labeled organic won’t make that fish any healthier for you or better for the environment.

The word “organic” often evokes images of a food that is natural, healthy, wholesome and clean — a product that is good for you, your family and the environment. Yet, the process of industrial salmon aquaculture, is in reality, anything but.

Unlike their wild cousins, farmed salmon spend most of their adult life in floating net pens with thousands of other fish. In the same waters year round, these large aquaculture facilities upset the delicate balance of nature.

Indeed, far from enhancing biodiversity or maintaining a balance with their surroundings, evidence suggests that open net salmon farms place new pressures on the ecosystem. They not only discharge large amounts of untreated waste directly into surrounding waters, but they also establish an ideal breeding ground for deadly diseases and parasites that can be readily transferred to native fish populations. Further, millions of farmed salmon escape each year into the wild — fugitive fish that change the genetic make-up of the native stocks and compete with wild fish for food.

Even worse, perhaps, is the impact that current salmon farming practices have on our wild fish stocks. Unlike catfish or tilapia, salmon are carnivorous. Farmed salmon, therefore, depend on wild fish and fish oil as a staple in their diet. And farmed salmon have quite an appetite. In fact, it takes roughly three pounds of wild fish to produce just one pound of farmed salmon — a production ratio that not only would put most restaurants out of business, but also one that can hardly be considered sustainable.

As appetites for seafood grow and fish populations continue to shrink, restaurants like ours will increasingly depend on farmed fish for our seafood supply. But as responsible food professionals we cannot support an organic system that harms the environment and takes more resources from our seas than it provides in return — a situation that is inevitably the case with farming carnivorous finfish.

Food is more than just a cooking or eating experience. It’s a relationship that embodies our connection with the land and sea. And being a sustainable chef is more than just utilizing
clever marketing and offering a few organic or free-range menu choices. It’s about balancing the appetites and desires of our guests with seasonal life cycles and what our environment can safely provide — a never-ending struggle that culminates on the plate and palate.

Certifying farmed salmon or carnivorous finfish as organic — a standard the Board has already held that wild fish cannot meet — is not only ludicrous, but it would turn U.S. organic standards into a complete mockery of all the values it once stood for.

Members of the National Organic Standards Board should resist the pressures by corporate special interests and refuse to stretch our organic standards. It might be a small stand in a much bigger fight, but it’s a decision that all of us who rely on sustainable food would be thankful for.

Steve Barnes

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Eat, drink and be candid, with Times Union Senior Writer Steve Barnes

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